The battlegrounds of ancient Rome are reminiscent of Westeros. Yet while the real-time combat may not be quite as up-close-and-brutal as a Game of Thrones style throat-slitting, it’s in the courts of political intrigue — the wheeling, dealing and figurative backstabbing — that the wars of Rome II are won and lost.

Bethesda’s Pete Hines has reaffirmed the company’s decision from April last year to put a halt on Prey 2 development, saying that there’s no new information because it’s “simply not good enough”.

“What we said the last time we said anything was that it’s not up to our quality standards,” said Hines to IGN. “It’s simply not good enough. We’re not going to just proceed blindly with something that isn’t good enough. We’ve been very specific about why, and we’ve been very specific about the whats. When that gets addressed and changed or whatever, at that point we can give an update.”

Hines took the chance to comment somewhat on recent rumours that his company had been strong-arming Human Head into losing control of the game.

“Nobody’s disappointment is greater than ours,” he continued. “We spent a lot of time and money and effort trying to make this thing happen and support folks, but at the same time, you just can’t keep throwing money at it. You have to have the discipline to say, ‘it’s not good enough. It’s not hitting the quality bar’.”

“As we said in our last update, it’s not good enough. It’s not where it needs to be. When we have more info than that, we’ll let you know. What is the chance that we have some amazing, unbelievable game and we’re just not talking about it for no reason? Zero.”

“Again, when we have more info on it, we’ll be happy to talk about it. That’s what I can say for now.”

Source: IGN

If you’re feeling cynical about the upcoming Batman: Arkham Origins game, then don’t worry: developers Warner Bros. understand.

“I would say that people have the right to be cynical; they have the option to be cynical,” said WB’s creative director Eric Holmes to Gamespot.

“Come and play the game at one of these events where we bring the game. And I think as soon as you’ve got the pad in your hand, you’re going to see that this game is authentic and uses the same underpinnings and core mechanics of the previous Arkham games.”

Indeed, this was basically exactly what we found when we went hands-on at E3 last week.

Holmes emphasised that the story behind Origins was what would really show players they weren’t just phoning it in.

“I think we have a great story. I can’t tell you too much about, but I can tell you I’m really excited about our story,” Holmes said. “I think it’s a very important Batman story and I think fans are going to love that probably more than any other thing in the game.”

Source: Gamespot

A source inside EA claims that the company has made its entire analysis and review team redundant, according to reports published today.

Around 20 employees formed part of the team, which conducted internal reviews of games from the perspective of outsiders such as games media, analysed Metacritic trends, and generally made sure EA’s games were as presentable as possible before journalists and players got their hands on them.

A former employee took to Twitter to vent her frustrations, but the initial tweet about the entire department being cut has been deleted.

The news follows April’s reveal that EA had cut a massive 10% of its workforce by winding up its Partners program.

Source: Polygon

Gunpoint, the delightful 2D stealth-puzzler-platformer (read our review here) has revealed that its sales figures were enough to recover the development costs in just a few hours.

Creator Tom Francis has revealed that technically it only took 64 seconds to recover the cost of Game Maker, the software used to create the title, but within a few hours his investment costs of time and expertise from others were completely paid off.

Francis has now left writing for PC Gamer to work full time on development, saying “So, I quit my job. In fact, I think I have quit jobs, as a concept.”

“I started Gunpoint as an audition piece to get myself a position at a developer, but designing it has been so creatively satisfying that I no longer want one, and so commercially successful that I’ll never need one.”

Bravo. If you still haven’t played this delightfully clever little game, you can buy it direct from the developer at http://www.gunpointgame.com/. You’ll get a Steam key out of it too, which is nice.

You are upside down.

Your vision is blurry, and the dim light around you isn’t helping. But as your eyes begin to adjust, you see them: bodies. Just like you. Hanging upside down, the blood obviously drained from them like sponges.

This already grim situation is made worse by the clanking buzz of a chainsaw breaking through a human spine. You can’t see it, but blood, muscle and tissue are splattering on the floor.

Soon, a massive brute passes by you to a nearby room, carrying the top off a human body. He begins to mutilate it with a machete.

This is The Evil Within. It’s disgusting, it’s brutal, and survival horror fans are going to love it.

Just Add Water have released some early pre-alpha gameplay footage of the upcoming HD re-release, Abe’s Oddysee New N’ Tasty.

This gameplay footage builds on the last gameplay footage we saw and shows the same amazing crisp animations and total lack of screen transitions. Amazing!

You can download this file for yourself by clicking right here.

Check it out below.

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The prominence of AMD components in both next-gen consoles means that Battlefield 4 on PC will also be optimised for AMD, confirmed AMD overnight.

“It makes sense that game developers would focus on AMD hardware with AMD hardware being the backbone of the next console generation,” said AMD in a statement to IGN. “At this time, though, our relationship with DICE and EA is exclusively focused on Battlefield 4 and its performance optimizations for AMD CPUs, GPUs and APUs.”

If you’re worried that your NVIDIA card will be sub-par, AMD confirmed that they “undertake no efforts to prevent our competition from optimizing for games before their release”, with EA chiming in to add that “This does not exclude DICE from working with other partners to ensure players have a great experience across a wide set of PCs for all their titles.”

Source: IGN

Four new multiplayer maps and one new zombies map are coming to Black Ops 2 on July 2 in the ‘Vengeance’ map pack, which has a timed exclusivity deal with Microsoft.

The mas include ‘Cove’, a small island littered with jet wreckage, ‘Detour’, a destroyed suspension bridge, ‘Rush’, a paintball course turned into a combat arena, and ‘Uplink’, a re-imagined version of ‘Summit’ from the original Black Ops, set in the jungle.

‘Buried’ is the zombie map addition, and is set in an abandoned Old West mining town. The ‘Vengeance’ pack also comes with the Ray Gun Mark II, which is apparently “so powerful” that anybody who buys the ‘Vengeance’ pack will be able to use this gun in all other zombies maps.

PC and PS3 players will have to wait as usual — the last two maps packs have taken a month to drip down to other platforms so this will likely be much the same.

Check out the trailer below.

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If for some reason you still haven’t played Torchlight, the first installment in Runic Games ARPG series, then now you have literally no excuse as the entire game is free for the next 48 hours.

You can head over to GOG.com and grab it right now. The sequel, should this one be to your liking, can be found here for $19.99 and is well worth your time (our review).

This is all part of GOG.com’s current #NoDRM Summer Sale, with 500 games on sale until July 5. Today’s deals include The Definitive D&D bundle for just $20 (which is obnoxiously good value) and the Alan Wake bundle for just $5 (again, dang).

The upcoming first-person puzzler Magrunner: Dark Pulse is launching on Thursday, seeking to blend sci-fi with the Cthulu Mythos because well why not.

As you can see in the trailer below, it’s got a bit of a Portal vibe to it, assuming of course Portal also featured shoggoths and the Dark Young of Shug-Niggurath.

The current cheapest pre-order price is at GOG.com, where you can grab it for $16.99. It is also available on Steam.

Take a look!

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We The Force Studios are a small indie group developing out of Mexico, and they’ve used E3 to announce the upcoming launch of their 2D action-platformer Randall.

Set in a dystopian future where a crystal-like mineral infects the minds of the populace and keeps them docile and afraid, Randall has instead found himself with the ability to read people’s minds — and must use this power to prevent an evil corporation from taking over the world.

Take a look at the trailer below and see what you think — we could be in for a treat.

Source: Polygon